Mighty mouse-chasers around the house

Charlie, a nine-month-old African cheetah bound for a Wellington home with his brother. Picture / Greg Bowker

As mousers go, they're more impressive than your everyday tabby.

Cheetah cubs Delta and Charlie will, however, be welcome to chase away any vermin from the Wellington home zoo of Gerry Whitehouse-Tedd and his partner.

For the big cats will be living with them, difficult as it is to imagine.

They won't have the run of the house and they won't be fed indoors.

But any time the South African-born brothers want to come in from their outdoors enclosure, through the Whitehouse-Tedd garden and into the house for a tickle behind the ear, they'll be welcome.

The cheetahs arrived at the home zoo yesterday after a two-day flight from Johannesburg, to be trained as the star attractions in the zoo's close encounters programme.

That means visitors, including schoolchildren, will get to see the big cats reasonably close up without barriers such as railings and glass.

Mr Whitehouse-Tedd, the zoo's animal conditioner and trainer, will share his home with the cheetahs as part of that training. Only he and his assistant, Mieke Timmermans, will be allowed to work with them.

His partner, Dr Katja Geschke, will interact with the animals too, but her contact will be more limited - even though it was her house first.

There are no children or pets to worry about in the family home, but it will definitely not be a case of curling up in front of the telly with a pussycat on the lap.

"These are wild animals. They are dangerous," Mr Whitehouse-Tedd said. "But there is a part of the house they can come into. Like any cats, they will sharpen their claws on the carpet or leather furniture."

He said the cheetahs had been hand-reared at Cheetah Outreach at Capetown.